


Dirge Without Music

by temporal-infidelity (gyabou)



Series: but I am not resigned [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Underage Drug Use, Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-08 21:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17988572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyabou/pseuds/temporal-infidelity
Summary: The next time he saw Klaus, he didn’t know it was him at all.New words were being added to the other ghosts’ endless murmurings (for that was what they were, Dave had realized, eventually; they were dead, and he was dead, and there were no choirs of angels and pearly gates, just this weird, dusty limbo of jostling not-bodies and ceaseless groaning over unfinished business). For the first time, the ghosts murmured about something other than themselves. They were talking, instead, about a boy: a boy who could see them, speak to them. Maybe help them all get out of this place.After Dave dies, he meets a little boy without a name who can see ghosts. He's strangely familiar.





	1. Chapter 1

_I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground._  
_So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:_  
_Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned_  
_With lilies and with laurels they go; but I am not resigned._

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Dirge Without Music"

* * *

The last thing he remembered was Klaus calling his name, his distressed face hovering inches from his own, growing dimmer by the minute.

And then … nothing. For a long time.

Gradually, though, something came out of the nothing. It wasn’t firm and distinct and tangible, though, like regular consciousness. It was more like the fuzzy, half-realistic dreamlike state you existed in between sleeping and waking, where nothing seemed quite real. All around him he could sense others, their forms wavy and dim, shadows that disappeared when viewed in anyway except out of the corner of your eye -- if he still had eyes, which he wasn’t so sure he did anymore. Their voices were nothing but a constant stream of buzzing, the occasional word floating up from the din:

_Regret._

_Hollow._

_Longing._

_Hello._

_Goodbye._

It was better than nothing, but it was still lonely.

* * *

The next time he saw Klaus, he didn’t know it was him at all.

New words were being added to the other ghosts’ endless murmurings (for that was what they were, Dave had realized, eventually; they were dead, and he was dead, and there were no choirs of angels and pearly gates, just this weird, dusty limbo of jostling not-bodies and ceaseless groaning over unfinished business). For the first time, the ghosts murmured about something other than themselves. They were talking, instead, about a boy: a boy who could see them, speak to them. Maybe help them all get out of this place.

Dave didn’t know what to think about any of this, but he couldn’t help but be curious. So he joined the press of spirits gathering around the child, wondering if it was true, if he couldn’t finally speak to someone who wasn’t dead, for the first time in -- however long it had been.

As he got closer, he realized that something strange was happening to him, and to the others around him. He was becoming … more himself. He could remember what it was like to have hands again, feet that moved, lips and a tongue he could lick them with, eyelids that could blink and eyelashes that tickled the tops of his cheeks. And the vague, white forms that he moved among seemed more like people too: here was an old man, dressed in an old, threadbare frock coat; a little girl in braids; a woman in a smart hat whose mascara had run all down her face.

They were all circled around a small, cringing figure that glowed like the sun, and they were all screaming at him.

“Help me!”

“Please … is my daughter all right?”

“Tell the police, they murdered me!”

“I want to go home!”

The boy hugged his knees and rocked back and forth, his eyes pressed closed and his teeth chattering.

Dave shook his head in horror. Didn’t they realize they were terrifying him? He was just a kid, for Christ’s sake!

He pushed his way through the unruly crowd, marveling at how tangible and real they all felt, as if this boy was some kind of battery they could all power themselves off of. And maybe that’s what he was. But he was also a scared kid, and he had to do something about it.

He got himself inbetween the crowd of spirits and the boy and spread his arms. “Leave him alone!” he shouted. “Give him some room, Jesus!”

The spirits fell silent, shocked. Dave stared them down, and they reluctantly backed away, muttering to themselves about who the hell he thought he was.

He turned back to the kid. He’d raised his head, his hands falling from his ears, and was staring at him, his eyes still wet with tears.

“You okay, kid?” Dave asked.

The boy looked at him, eyes wide, and then nodded, slowly.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m not gonna hurt you. What’s your name?” Dave tried to keep his voice calm, the way he’d learned to talk to civilians when they were searching villages for enemy combatants.

“I don’t have a name,” the boy said. “They call me --”

Just then, a door in the dark room they were in creaked open. Dave hadn’t really taken a look at it, but now, in the faint light coming from the outside, he could see where they were: a mausoleum. A man with an artfully-arranged moustache and beard, with a monocle, stood in the door.

“Well, Number Four?” the man said. “Are you calm enough now to rejoin your siblings?”

The boy -- Number Four -- stood, glanced quickly at Dave, and then nodded. “Yes, Dad. I’m ready.”

“Good,” his father said, then frowned. “Good enough for now. Come along. This will complete your training for today.”

His shoulders slumped, Number Four followed his father out the door. Before it closed, he looked back at Dave, smiled, and gave a little wave.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all of your comments!

_Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you._  
_Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust._  
_A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,_  
_A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost._

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Dirge Without Music"

 

* * *

 

Dave didn’t see Number Four again for a little while. When that door closed, he suddenly lost the temporary feeling permanence he’d acquired in Four’s presence, and he’d been whisked away like a puff of smoke on gust of wind.

When he finally came back to himself, remembered who he was and what had happened to him, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed, so disorienting had the transmission from pseudo-corporeality to mere memory been. The first thing that did come back to him, though, was that vision of Klaus’s face, blurry and partially obstructed by the smoke of the battlefield and Dave’s own fading vision. That memory transmuted into a very different vision of Klaus, kissing him in the shadowy corner of the dance club.  _ Shhh, they’ll see _ , Klaus whispered, and giggled, and Dave felt compelled to swallow those giggles up, see what they tasted like. He couldn’t remember what they had tasted like, though. Not anymore.

He needed to talk to Number Four again. He understood why so many spirits had been attracted to him, now. Being in his presence had almost felt like being alive again. It was selfish, he knew. But it wasn’t just that. He was worried about the kid. He wanted to protect him.

And so Dave focused, as best he could, until finally he sensed that warm spark again, that magnetic energy that pulled at his spirit. He followed it.

When the world became sharp and gloriously painful again, he was in … a museum? That’s what it looked like, anyway. But it didn’t sound like any museum Dave had ever been in. Usually they were quiet, respectful. This was anything but: alarms were sounding, people were shouting, and there was the sound of something very heavy being thrown from a great distance.

“Well, hello there,” a voice said.

And then Dave saw him.

It was definitely Number Four, though he was almost unrecognizable from the scared little boy he had (just? It felt so recent) glimpsed. He was older, a teenager, at least. He seemed more confident, not scared at least, and he was dressed in the most unusual fashion: like a wealthy schoolboy, in shorts and everything, but he had an unusually shaped mask across his eyes, hiding half his features. But Dave knew it was him: there was still that glow, though to him it seemed slightly dimmed, as though something was carefully holding it in check.

The weirdest thing was, though, that there was something very familiar about him, and not in the sense that Dave could see the little boy he’d met in him. It was something else, something he couldn’t quite place, and the mask obscuring his face didn’t help any.

As he stared in stunned silence, Number Four took a step back and cocked his head. “Hey, I remember you,” he said. “And that’s saying something, because, honestly, I’ve seen so many of you at this point that you really all start to melt together after awhile. You’re that soldier that I met in the mausoleum, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Dave said. His voice sounded weak and rusty. He stepped a little closer to Number Four and felt better. “That was me. How long ago was that?”

“About ten years ago?”

“Oh.” He couldn’t believe he’d missed a whole decade in his confusion. He wondered vaguely what year it even was now; but did it matter?

“You didn’t know?”

“I … lost track of time.”

The kid nodded. “It happens,” he said, nonchalantly. He put a hand in the inside pocket of his blazer and began rooting around in it. “Any particular reason for this visit?”

Not too far away, there was a magnificent crash, and someone shouted, “Stay away from me, you monster!”

“What was that?” Dave asked.

“Ben, probably,” Number Four said vaguely. He finally found what he was looking for in his pocket: a cigarette and a lighter, which he proceeded to fire up. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Dave,” he said.

“What war did you fight in?”

“I am -- was -- in Vietnam.” 

“Interesting.” He drew on the cigarette. “I’ve thought about you a few times, you know.”

“Sorry?” Dave was genuinely confused. He was one of thousands of ghosts Number Four must have seen, why would he stand out?

“Yeah,” the kid said, and blushed a little. “You made a big impression on me, I guess. Trying to protect me and all. I appreciated it.” He looked him up and down. “And you’re kind of cute.”

Dave felt a little uncomfortable. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen,” he replied, defensively.

_ Jesus _ , Dave thought. Maybe this was a bad idea.

He was about to say just that, when suddenly there was a new commotion, much closer than before. A dark-skinned girl appeared in the doorway, stared right through him, and crossed her arms.

“Klaus!” she shouted. “What are you doing in here? We needed you!”

“All right, all right, I’m coming,” the boy muttered, stomping out his cigarette on the Persian rug beneath his feet. He walked around Dave, waving. “See you around, I guess.”

“Who were you talking to?” the girl said, suspiciously, as they headed down the stairs..

“A very hot ghost.”

She groaned, then laughed. “You are ridiculous!” 

And Dave watched them go, his mouth open in shock, until Klaus was too far away and he once again lost his form. 

 

* * *

  


This time, he managed to keep his wits a little better. Maybe it was because now he had something to stew over. Could … could this kid actually be … his Klaus? It was impossible, but it made sense. Now he knew why he had seemed so familiar to him. He was so young, but this boy would one day be the same Klaus that he first met that confusing night in Vietnam, almost a year before his death.

But how? That was years ago. This Klaus would not have even been born yet.

So Dave decided to do some research.

He followed Klaus home, staying just out of the periphery of his vision, observing everything he could. He thought about what little his Klaus had told him about his life and compared it. 

Klaus had never been very forthcoming about his past -- unlike Dave, who’d told him everything about his own life, readily -- his childhood in a small town in Vermont, his twin sister Lucy, who he loved and missed, his dad, who had died of cancer when he was young, and his quiet, strong mother who’d raised them on her own afterwards. He’d told him about the boys he’d had crushes on throughout his teens, but had never tried to kiss the way Klaus had so boldly kissed him, even though he’d really wanted to. He’d talked about what he wanted to do when he got home from the service (go to school and become an art teacher), and how maybe Klaus could join him, if it didn’t sound too boring to him. Klaus had told him it didn’t sound boring at all, and Dave had felt so much joy in that moment that he’d been amazed he hadn’t died and gone to heaven right then.

(Of course, now he was dead, and not in heaven, and he’d never be an art teacher or bring Klaus home to meet Lucy and Mom. He’d never find out if they’d accept him and Klaus. He’d never know if it would have all worked out.)

On the other hand, what Klaus had told him about himself could fit on a postage stamp. Dave knew that: 

  1. He was adopted.
  2. He had a lot of brothers and sisters.
  3. His father was very cold.
  4. His mother was very kind.
  5. One of his brothers was dead.



And that was it.

The things Dave had ascertained without being told:

  1. Klaus was funny and kind. 
  2. Klaus had a lot of problems he didn’t like to talk about.
  3. Namely, he was very reliant on any kind of mood altering substance he could get his hands on -- alcohol, the very potent weed that the soldiers acquired from the black market and passed around, pills that he got prescribed from the medical tent for faked illnesses, and whatever other drugs he could find when they went on leave. 
  4. Klaus had nightmares and talked in his sleep, usually about someone named Ben, which was how Dave had found out about his dead brother.
  5. Sometimes, Dave had caught him talking to himself, or more accurately, talking to someone that either wasn’t really there or that Dave simply couldn’t see.



He wasn’t so sure about the last thing. The first time he’d stumbled across Klaus doing this, chills had run down his spine. His boyfriend had been huddled behind a tree in the jungle when they were setting up camp, his hands pressed over his ears, muttering, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

Dave had touched him on his shoulder, and Klaus had nearly jumped a mile. 

“What’s wrong?” Dave asked. Klaus scrambled to his feet, made a joke, and headed over to get some water from the supplies. Dave looked around to see if there was anything that had set Klaus off, but the only thing he’d seen was a patch of disturbed earth that he had a dark suspicion might be a hastily dug grave.

He’d worried that Klaus was hallucinating, a side effect of some drug he’d taken, or a side effect of not taking anything. Or that he was going mad. Either was a possibility. But Klaus had seemed completely fine. Until the next time it happened.

Now Dave watched this strange, young Klaus interact with his siblings, and all he could see were the many little things that reminded him of his Klaus. His sense of humor. The way he comforted his brother -- Ben! -- after they returned home from the museum. The way he smoked endlessly in his bedroom, blowing the smoke out his open window and hiding the cartons inside his mattress.

The nightmares he had every night.

The conversations he regularly had with what might have looked to that other Dave, the living one, like thin air, but which this Dave, the dead one, now knew were in fact ghosts.

And when he saw the other completely unexplainable things Klaus’ siblings were capable of, Dave knew: somehow, this was his Klaus. Or would be, someday. He wasn’t sure how, but this charming, tortured teenaged boy would grow up and somehow travel back to 1968, winding up on the floor next to Dave’s bunk, and change his life forever.

Dave didn’t know how it would happen, but he was going to stick around and find out.


	3. Chapter 3

_The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,_  
_They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled_  
_Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve._  
_More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world._

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Dirge Without Music"

* * *

 

He waited for a good time to approach Klaus again. Now that he knew who he was, talking to him made him anxious. What if he blurted out something he shouldn’t? Klaus had yet to experience the things Dave remembered about him, yet to become the person Dave knew. And as much of a mystery as Klaus had been to him, Dave knew things about Klaus that he didn’t know yet (the twistiness of the logic made Dave’s no-longer-existent head spin). He thought of that everytime he saw Klaus leaning over to whisper in Ben’s ear at meal times, or stretched out on Ben’s bed reading out loud an article about the practicalities of anal sex from a copy of _Pink_ magazine while Ben’s ears slowly turned red, when Ben would sneak into Klaus’ room at night to comfort him after a nightmare. He had to be careful not to let Klaus know that Ben was going to die (in some way he didn’t know and was afraid to imagine). Wouldn’t that mess something up?

So he hovered on the fringes, avoiding any direct interaction, until one day, not long after one of Klaus’ brothers -- the one who only went by a number for a name, Five -- disappeared, he saw Klaus speculatively standing in front of the medicine cabinet, staring thoughtfully at a bottle of cough syrup.

He took the bottle down, read the back, opened it up, swished it around, and sniffed it, as if it were a fine wine. Then he closed it up, and instead of replacing it in the medicine cabinet, he slipped it into his pants pocket and headed off for his bedroom.

Dave wasn’t sure what he was doing, exactly, but he had the feeling it was something he shouldn’t be doing.

This suspicion was confirmed when Klaus, settling himself comfortably on his bed, popped open the cap of the medicine and began to chug it.

Dave couldn’t help himself.

“What are you doing???” he shouted, manifesting suddenly right in front of Klaus, who jumped a mile, fell over, dropped the bottle, and spilled half of it all over himself in the process, staining his pale blue pajamas purple.

“Holy shit weasels!” Klaus screamed, scrambling back into an upright position and rescuing the bottle. He put it on his nightstand and started licking cough syrup off his fingers. “Why can’t you fuckers leave me alone for a blessed minute?”

Dave just stood, or maybe floated, he wasn’t really sure, there, staring down at him.

 _This is how it begins_ , he thinks to himself. He remembered Klaus, aching for a fix, begging Dave to go get him something, anything, from the infirmary. When Dave would refuse, he’d swear at him, pull his sweating, shivering form up from where it had been huddled on their bunk, and march off to do it himself. Later, he’d cuddle up to him, beg him for forgiveness, and Dave would, because he had no idea how to help Klaus except to just love him as best he could.

The Klaus before him was observing him with increasing curiousity. “Oh, it’s you again,” he said. “Soldier boy. You never told me your name, did you?”

“Um,” Dave said, because it had just occured to him that maybe he shouldn’t tell him his real name. That might screw things up, too. Had his Klaus recognized him as the ghost that used to visit him? Or had it not happened yet the first time around, and now Dave’s ghost was introducing some kind of new variable into the equation? He didn’t understand how all this time travel stuff worked.

“Did you forget?” Klaus asked. He stood up and stripped off his stained pajama top, and Dave looked away. It felt inappropriate to look at teenaged Klaus in any state of undress, because it made him think of adult Klaus in total undress, and that was just wrong.

“Forget what?” he asked, his eyes tightly closed.

“Your name. Sometimes you spectral types get muddle-headed and forget things about yourselves.” The springs on his bed squeaked. “I’m decent now. Christ, you’re shy.”

Dave looked back around. Klaus was wearing a black tank top and was holding a bottle of nail polish. At Dave’s questioning look, he wiggled it. “Stole it from my sister. Allison, not Vanya. She’d never paint her nails.”

Shaking his head -- as usual, half of what Klaus had to say made zero sense to him -- Dave said, “I haven’t forgotten my name. It’s … Dan.” He imagined a snickering Klaus pointing at him. _Dan! How imaginative! You should have been a secret agent, Danny boy!_

“Dan,” the real Klaus said, turning the name over his mouth. He uncapped the nail polish and carefully scraped the excess polish from the brush before beginning to apply it to his big toenail. It was silver, Dave noted. “So, Dan. What brings you today to my humble abode?” With his free hand, he made a grand gesture towards the disaster of his bedroom.

“Uh,” Dave said again. He imagined he’d be saying a lot around Klaus. He certainly had when they were both alive and he had nothing in particular to hide. “I just … wanted to speak to you.”

“And the topic?” Klaus stretched out one leg and surveyed his work. “Anybody you’d like me to contact? Did you leave somebody behind when you died?” His tone was lightly mocking, but when he raised his eyes to look at Dave, his expression turned somber. “Shit, I’m sorry, buddy. Who was it?”

Dave hadn’t realized that tears (Why could ghosts even cry? Nothing about this made sense) were rolling down his cheeks until that moment. He scrubbed at his face, then wondered why he was bothering. “It’s nothing.”

Klaus sighed dramatically and moved over on the bed. “Come on. Sit your transparent butt down and tell me the story.”

Tentatively, Dave sat down on the bed, wondering if he actually could, but somehow, it worked.

“So?” Klaus had drawn one knee up to his chest and resumed painting his nails. “Did you leave a girl back home and never get back to her or something?”

“Uh,” Dave said. Third time this conversation, he noted. He shouldn’t even be doing this, but suddenly it was all tumbling out. “No. We met in Vietnam, actually. He was … a fellow soldier.”

Klaus froze and looked up at him, his eyes wide and his cheeks a little flushed. “He? You fell in love with another soldier? Wow.” His chin rested on his knee. “That must have been difficult.”

He nodded dumbly.

“Did he know?”

“Oh, yeah. He knew.”

“Was he, you know …” Klaus fiddled with the nail polish bottle, plunging the brush in and out and screwing and unscrewing the cap, and Dave suddenly realized he was a little nervous, “okay with it?”

Dave chuckled a little. “More than okay.”

“Oh.” Klaus was silent for a little bit, then cleared his throat and turned his attention to his nails again. His ears were a little red. Dave thought it was adorable. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Klaus act bashful, but he supposed nobody was born the sort of libertine he was; you had to work your way up to it. “And then you died, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“And your … boyfriend … he must have been pretty torn up about it.”

He pictured Klaus’ face, mouth stretched in a rictus of terror and panic, tears streaming down his dirty cheeks, calling his name and begging him not to go. “Yeah.”

Klaus put the nail polish bottle back on the dresser, stretched out his legs, and wiggled his toes. Ten silvery nails twinkled back at him. “Well, what’s his name? Do you know where I can find him? What do you want to say him?”

Dave just stared at him. Then he said, “Sorry, kid. You can’t get a message to him for me. Thanks for the offer though.” His voice broke a little on the word _can’t_.

“Did he die too?”

“Something like that.”

“I could try to summon his ghost.”

“No. Let him be at peace.”

Klaus lay down on the bed, his legs still dangling on the floor. Finally, he said, “If you could say something to him, what would you say?”

“I’d say …” Dave closed his eyes. He imagined Klaus, as he was that night in the club in Saigon, staring at him with an expression of enchantment, his eyes warm and inviting and accepting. “I’d say, I wish things had turned out differently. I wish we could have had the future we dreamed about. I wish you’d told me your secrets, that you’d known you could trust me with them. I love you, and I wish more people in your life had told you that.” He let out a ragged breath, and when he opened his eyes, his Klaus was replaced by this young, proto-Klaus, who was staring at him, entranced, his eyes a little damp.

“Wow,” Klaus whispered.

Dave didn’t say anything. He felt exhausted, as though something inside of him had been released at last.

“I hope …” Klaus said, his voice so quiet it was almost inaudible. He trailed off.

“Go on,” Dave said.

He bit his lip. “I hope somebody says something like that to me someday.”

Dave smiled, slowly. “Don’t worry, kid. They will.”

 

* * *

 

Later, when Klaus was passed out, lulled by the cough syrup he’d guzzled earlier, Dave decided he couldn’t try to speak to him anymore, even though, before Klaus had nodded off to sleep, he’d mumbled, “I like talking to you, Dan. You’re not like those other moaning bastards. Visit again some time?” and Dave had nodded. But he shouldn’t have said those things to him; shouldn’t have revealed so much of himself. One day, this kid would grow up into the man he loved, but he wasn’t him yet, and he needed to be protected. Dave couldn’t let him know what was ahead for him, he was sure of it. For one thing, he didn’t quite know all of it, and sometimes knowing a little was a lot worse than knowing nothing.

He eyed the mostly-empty bottle of syrup. There were other things Klaus needed protection from, too, but Dave didn’t know what he could do about that. He could yell at Klaus about it, but beyond that, he was powerless. He couldn’t exactly rip the bottle from his hand, or snatch the weed or pills or other drugs that Klaus would increasingly experiment with, and that burned at him.

So he waited. He watched. He tried not to get involved.

But it was hard. Klaus grew older, looking more and more like the man he would one day be, and behaving more and more like him too -- the good and the bad.

The good: Klaus sitting on Allison’s bed, trying and often failing not to make faces as she carefully applies eyeshadow, liner, mascara, and lip gloss to his features. Vanya sits on the floor and watches, and when Allison offers to make her over, she blushes and shakes her head, but laughs when Klaus scoops her up in his arms and demands they dance now that he’s so “fancy” -- but she will have to lead.

The bad: Klaus climbing out the window of his bedroom late at night, nearly falling three times but managing to get down to the ground with just a few scratches. Dave worries about how he’ll get back up later, but it winds up not being an issue: after a night of misadventure, including some mysterious pills he swallows at a party that ends with him fleeing from a guy who just won’t take _no_ for an answer, he passes out on the front stoop, where Diego finds him the next morning and carries him up to his room without avoiding any detection.

And then came the awful day Ben died.

It was worse than anything Dave could have imagined, and afterwards, the other siblings gathered together in his room, crying, yelling at each other, and arguing about whose fault it was (Luther, their father, nobody). In the middle of it all, Klaus, who had been silent the entire time, stood up and left. Only Diego and Vanya noticed, but Diego was too busy screaming at Luther to go after him, and though Vanya tried, Klaus ignored her calls and walked straight out the front door, avoiding all efforts at subterfuge. Their father was locked in his study, anyway, and their mother and Pogo were with Ben’s body in the infirmary.

He didn’t return for a week, and none of the Hargreeves knew where he was during that time.

Only Dave did.

He had a terrible feeling of dread as he watched Klaus’ huddled figure walk steadily away from the academy, deeper into the bad part of the city. And that was when he decided: he needed to try to stop him, no matter the cost.

He manifested right in front of Klaus, startling him so that he reared back and almost fell on his ace.

“What the fuck!” he shouted, and a man dressed all in leather with a long beard who had been passing by stopped and stared at the skinny teenaged boy shouting at the air, then shook his head and walked on.

“Klaus,” Dave said, “you should go home.”

Klaus stared at him. “You again,” he said, and his voice was tense with anger. “Fuck off,” he said, and walked through him.

A shiver passed through Dave that made him want to float away and disperse into the air. It was from both the terrible sensation of his not-body being pushed through as though it were a fluttery curtain, as well as Klaus’ furious words. It made him long for nothingness. Instead, though, he turned around. “Are you mad at me?”

“Of course not,” Klaus called back. “Why would I be mad, _Dan_? It’s not like you just up and disappeared on me after our sweet heart-to-heart a few years ago.”

“I don’t understand,” Dave asked, trying to catch up with him. “I thought you didn’t like being haunted.”

Klaus stopped and turned around. “So what’s the deal?” he asked. “You been watching me all this time, just all silent and creepy? Is that how you get your spooky rocks off? Watching me get undressed or whatever?”

If he’d had any blood to blush with, Dave would have been scarlet by now. “No,” he said, though it was half right. Technically. Just not the perverted voyeuristic part of it.

“Just leave me alone,” Klaus said, and started stalking down the street again. He began to fumble in his pockets, and pulled out a pill bottle.

“Wait,” Dave said. “Klaus, please, go home. Your family will be worried about you.”

He laughed. “That’s unlikely.” He screwed open the bottle and held it up to his mouth, tumbling some of its contents into it.

“Don’t do that!” Dave shouted. “Klaus, stop it!”

But he didn’t. He dry swallowed the lot of them. “You know what I found out, Dan? If I take enough of these, or get fucked up some other way, I can’t hear you fuckers anymore! You can shout and scream and wack off over my sleeping body all you want, but I won’t know a thing!” He closed the bottle and shoved it back in his pocket. “So see you later, or hopefully never again. Have a nice death.” And he walked off.

“Klaus,” Dave whispered, but he knew it was pointless. There was nothing he could do.

He watched as Klaus drifted from place to place, at first talking himself into bars and clubs, then finding his way eventually into flophouses; sleeping in the park and under overpasses and, later, hotel rooms that he bartered for with sex. Inside, Dave raged. But when he tried to talk to Klaus, it was as if there was an impenetrable fog between them. Klaus had been exactly right: the drugs kept the ghosts away, Dave included.

And then, on the final day, Ben appeared. Dave watched as his shape slowly took form. He remembered the confusion and terror he’d felt when he’d first manifested. He felt bad for the kid, as he took it all in -- the weird state of his body, and where they were at the time -- on a muddy patch of dirt on the side of the road, by a copse of trees.

“You okay?” he asked, and Ben looked at him in horror.

“Who are you?” he asked, and then his face fell. “Oh. I’m dead, aren’t I? So you’re ghost. And … and so am I.”

Dave nodded, but as he did, he noticed something unusual. Unlike Dave, and every other ghost he’d encountered since his own death, Ben didn’t bear the marks of his death on his ghostly formed. He looked as hale and hearty as he had been when he was alive. Maybe it had something to do with his superpowers? Dave wasn’t sure, and it felt sort of rude to point it out. And anyway, there were more important things to worry about it.

“Your brother,” he said. “He needs help.” He didn’t know what Ben could do that he couldn’t, but he had to tell him.

Ben looked at him strangely. “You mean Klaus?”

Dave nodded and pointed into the trees, to where a huddled figure shivered, sleeping fitfully beneath a large coat he’d stolen a few days ago from a party.

Ben swore and rushed over, and Dave braced himself for the inevitable: he would shout at Klaus and Klaus would ignore him, insensible to his pleas, the same as he had with Dave all week.

But that’s not what happened. “Wake up, asshole!” Ben shouted at Klaus, and Klaus started awake so suddenly he cracked his head against the trunk of the tree he was sitting at the base of.

“Fuck,” he muttered, rubbing his head. Then he blinked a couple of times and stared at his brother in alarm. “ _Ben?_ ” he said.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Ben said. “Come on, you’ve got to go home. Or else you’re going to be joining me in I Died a Shitty Death Club soon, I think.”

Klaus shook his head, and Dave mimicked his motion. “I shouldn’t be able to see you,” Klaus muttered. He shouldn’t, and Dave knew it. Not with all the shit he had in his system.

“Stop screwing around,” Ben said, and clapped his hands. “Up, up, up …”

“Okay, okay, shit,” Klaus muttered, stumbling to his feet. He pulled the too large coat more tightly around him, then sniffed it, made a face and gagged. “This smells like puke.” Then he sniffed again. “Oh, that’s just me.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Ben said. “I can’t smell anything.”

 _Maybe_ , Dave thought frantically, _maybe he’s not as high as I thought. Maybe he’s sober enough to see me now._ The two brothers began to walk down the street, and as they passed Ben gave him a curious gaze. But Klaus didn’t notice him at all. He just walked past Dave as if he wasn’t there.

And Dave watched him go, and said nothing.

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

_Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave_  
_Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;_  
_Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave._  
_I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned._

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Dirge Without Music"

 

* * *

 

He didn’t think Ben really liked him.

Maybe that was too strong. Ben didn’t know him, and didn’t exactly trust him. And why should he? As far as he knew, Dave was just another ghost who wanted to bother his brother. And Dave could not exactly explain why he was different. _Oh, it’s just that I was in love with your brother when I was alive -- but he won’t meet me for another twelve years or so, that’s why he doesn’t remember it._

Ben might believe that such a thing was possible -- after all, he’d seen weirder stuff, and the kid was used to other-dimensional tentacled monsters exploding out of his abdomen on a regular basis -- but would he believe that Dave was telling the truth? Dave wasn’t so sure.

In any case, Klaus was very rarely in a state that he would be capable of seeing him. While he did go back to the Academy, it wasn’t for long. Soon he was going out almost every night, coming home late -- or, more accurately, early -- and falling asleep in weird places around the house; raiding his father’s liquor cabinet; leaving empty dime bags in the bathroom trash; and on one memorable occasion, vomiting a slew of whiskey, half-digested barbituates, and bile all over a priceless Persian rug.

This all culminated, at last, in Klaus being kicked out of the Academy.

“S’fine,” he muttered waving a hand at his fuming father. “Only stuck around here for the free rent anyway.”

Of course, he didn’t really have any other place to go. And so began the cycle.

He’d spend some nights sleeping on the streets, some nights in a homeless shelter, and after Diego and Vanya moved out and got their own places, some nights crashing with them, though they became less and less welcoming, until eventually Klaus was barred from there, too. Sometimes he’d overdose and wind up in a hospital, then in court ordered rehab or a halfway house, but that rarely lasted long, since he had a very hard time sticking to the rules, particularly once he got sober and started getting haunted by the ghosts of dead junkies.

Ben was there the whole time.

And Dave watched from the sidelines. He would try to appear to Klaus, but even when he could see other ghosts, he couldn’t quite seem to register Dave’s presence. Sometimes, Ben would catch his eye and frown at him. For a long time, Dave took that as a cue to scram, but eventually he worked up the courage to try to talk to him again.

It happened on a day that Klaus was in the hospital, passed out after having his stomach pumped. Ben was watching him, his face grin, when Dave approached.

“Hey,” Dave said. “Is he okay?”

Ben looked up at him, his brow creased. “What does it matter to you?”

“It does matter to me,” Dave said. “I … I can’t really explain why, but it does.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I mean it.”

“Look, my brother has enough trouble without having to carry out your last will and testament for you. It’s because of you assholes that he’s gotten to this point, anyway.”

“I don’t want anything from him. I just … I just wish I could help him.”

Ben shook his head. “Why?”

“I just do, all right?”

“Well, you can’t help him.” Ben sighed. “None of us can.”

In silence, they both looked at Klaus’ nearly still form on the hospital bed, his chest slowly rising and following. A feeling of helplessness came over Dave, so strong that he flashed burning hot for a moment, like a volcano about to explode.

The lights in the room flickered, and Klaus’ heart monitor began to beep wildly.  Ben looked at him, his mouth open in shock, and then suddenly Dave felt cold, as cold as he had that day in the rain and mud with the bullet wound in his chest leaking blood and staining Klaus’ hands, and then he felt nothing.

Ben stood up. “Where’d you go?” He looked around frantically. “Did you do that?”

A nurse came into the room and looked around, then called over her shoulder, “It’s okay, must have just been a power surge.” She came over to check the monitor, shaking her head. “I swear sometimes this place must be haunted!”

“Of course it fucking is,” Klaus muttered, his eyelids flickering.

_He’s awake_ … Dave thought. _Good_. He saw Ben rushing to Klaus’ side, and then everything became fuzzy and weird, and then he saw nothing.

 

* * *

  

Death was unreal for a little while after that. It was the way it had been right after he had died, when there didn’t seem to be anything solid to hold onto. He wasn’t sure precisely what had happened. He kept coming back to his theory of Klaus being like a battery that powered spirits. He’d felt pretty powerful there for a minute, like he’d hooked directly into a strong source of power, and then it was like he had been completely cut off as soon as Klaus woke up. And now he just couldn’t seem to hook himself back in again.

He tried manifesting himself whenever Klaus seemed sober enough, and it just didn’t seem to work. He could manage just enough of a presence for Ben to sometimes notice him, but he wasn’t even sure if he was recognizable as himself. He imagined himself looking like the ghosts he and his sister used to dress up for on Halloween, with a white sheet and hollow cut out eyes. Would he ever get back to the way he had been? Or was he stuck like this forever? He felt so out of focus that he couldn’t even manage to be sad about it. He just … existed. Sort of.

It was harder to keep track of time like this, and Klaus’ life seemed to flash before him like a badly edited film reel, jumping sporadically through time, never changing much except that Klaus looked older, more worn, and more exhausted as time passed.

And then Sir Reginald Hargreeves died.

As the resulting events began to unspool, Dave began to feel a little stronger. Maybe it was because Klaus was back here, in this place where he couldn’t escape his history and the terrible truth of his powers. He watched as the strange masked assassins broke into the Academy, and _he_ saw, if no one else but Ben did, when they kidnapped Klaus and shoved him in the trunk of his car. Something about the whole situation seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t quite place it until they tied him up in their motel room and began to do their bloody work.

Suddenly, it hit him:

The towel.

The coat.

The spreading blood on his face and chest.

_This was what he looked like the night Dave first met him._

It was going to happen, and it was going to happen soon.

 

* * *

 

When Klaus managed to conjure a whole room full of ghosts, Dave hung back. He was worried about changing things too much if Klaus saw him again, recognized him, so close to when he went back in time. Klaus wasn’t the only one who could recognize him, though.

“You’re still around?” Ben asked, appearing suddenly by his side. “Haven’t seen you much lately.”

“I had a little trouble getting my car started, so to speak,” Dave said.

“Hm, I’m not surprised with that stunt you pulled at the hospital that time,” Ben said. “What was that, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Dave said. At Ben’s skeptical look, he added, “I’m telling the truth.” He paused, and then said, “Did you tell him about me?”

Ben snorted. “Of course not,” he said. “I told you he has enough shit to deal with. I mean, look at him.” He gestured towards Klaus, who was presently banging his head repeatedly against a table.

“Good,” Dave said. “It’s better that you didn’t, I think.”

Shaking his head, Ben said, “You’re a weird one. I don’t get your angle --”

He was cut off by the door opening and a woman -- a police officer -- stepping inside. She freed Klaus and began to advance across the room, gun drawn.

“I don’t think this is going to turn out well,” Ben muttered.

“He’s escaping!” Dave pointed towards Klaus struggling to fit through a vent in the wall. “Come on.”

They followed Klaus out, only pausing for a moment when they heard a gun shot ring out. “Well, that sucks,” Ben muttered. “I think that was Diego’s ex-girlfriend or something. Klaus! Come on, you have to get out of here.” His brother had just tumbled out of the vent entrance and onto the sidewalk. He was holding a large black briefcase. Dave’s heart, if he’d had one, would have been beating hard. The briefcase. That was the last thing Klaus needed to match up exactly to his memory of that first encounter. It was going to happen any second now.

Klaus, carrying the briefcase in one hand and trying to keep his towel closed with the other, pelted barefoot down the alley, emerged onto a street, and saw a bus at a stop nearby. It was just starting to close its doors.

“Wait!” he screamed, running over it. He smacked the side of the bus with the briefcase a few times. “Stop, you motherfucker! I need to get on!”

Miraculously, the bus stopped. The driver took one look at Klaus, stumbling up the stairs, and said, “I’m guessing you don’t have the fare.”

“Uh,” Klaus said, looking down at himself, “I think I left my wallet at home.” He attempted to give her a winning smile, and she rolled her eyes.

“Sit the fuck down and don’t cause any trouble,” she muttered, and Klaus did just that.

 

* * *

 

When he opened the briefcase and blue light flashed, both he and Ben stared at the empty spot where Klaus had been sitting a moment ago.

_It’s happening_ , Dave thought wildly. _It’s really happening_. Right now, fifty years in the past, Klaus was appearing in a flash of blue light at the side of Dave’s bunk. He wished with everything he had that he was there right now, solid and whole, and could take him in his arms and tell him how much he’d missed him.

“Klaus?” Ben said, and then repeated it a little a louder. He looked at Dave in a panic. “Where is he?” His eyes narrowed. “Do you know what’s going on? You do, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “I thought it would be a bad idea to say anything …”

“What the hell!” Ben said. “You --” But something strange was happening to Ben. His form was growing strange and indistinct. Ben was always so much more solid and real-looking than any of the other ghosts; Dave had never seen his form like this. He could feel it happening to him, too. Klaus was gone: they couldn’t hold themselves together anymore.

_And this is where it either ends or really starts_ , Dave thought, because he suddenly realized he had no idea what was going to happen next. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, what Klaus would do after he died. If he would get back. As he drifted off into insubstantiality, he thought, _Please make him come back, safe and sound._

 

* * *

  

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he and Ben popped back into existence, but he knew what Klaus had done immediately.

He was sitting on the bus seat, looking just as he had when Dave had last seen him when he was alive, holding the briefcase in his bloody hands. The fresh pain and shock on his face, the long stare towards nowhere. He must have gone straight for the briefcase as soon as he could and returned.

That meant, Dave realized, that Klaus could have gone home anytime he wanted, probably. But he didn’t. He stayed. And Dave could only assume that he had stayed for him.

He sat down next to him. “Klaus?” he said. But Klaus kept staring off into the distance as the bus trundled along. He had no idea that Dave was sitting right next to him. And Dave should have known that would be the case: he could vividly remember the pills (stolen from the infirmary the day before) Klaus had dry-swallowed that morning, the last morning of Dave’s life. “Just a little pick-me-up before the shit hits the fan,” he’d said, winking, “something to steady my nerves, you know,”; and how could Dave begrudge him that?

Dave knew Klaus couldn’’t see him, but he still couldn’t help himself. This was the first time in all these years that he and Klaus had been up to date, the first time since Dave’s death that Klaus had known who he really was. “Klaus!” he said again, and then he tried to do something he hadn’t bothered trying the whole time he’d been a ghost: he tried to touch Klaus.

His arms, reaching out in a desperate sort of embrace, went right through Klaus’ body, like it was made out of water. But it was Klaus who was solid, and Dave whose impossible existence had no permanence; he was a mistake, a memory stamped on the world that should have forgotten him by now. Only Klaus probably remembered him at this point, but he still couldn’t see him. All he did was shiver and stare down at his hands, stained with blood which had leaked from Dave’s body fifty years ago.

“Klaus,” he said, his voice ragged, a voice heard by no one living. He put his head in hands and screamed in frustration. Why was he even here? What was the point in sticking around if he couldn’t even do anything for Klaus?

“What happened?” Ben whispered. Both Klaus and Dave looked up at him, and Dave wasn’t sure which one he was talking to, but he couldn’t answer, anyway. He felt his grip on the present fading, and the world went dim.

 

* * *

 

As he floated in that gray limbo, he heard voices buzzing and mumbling. Other ghosts, he thought at first, but then they began to sound familiar.

_End of the world and you want to get sober all of a sudden …_

_There’s something I need to do and the whole pesky thing doesn’t seem to work unless I’m sober._

_His name was Dave._

“Dave.” Ben’s voice was closer, more immediate. It was a struggle to focus on it, and all Dave wanted to do was disappear. “That’s you, right? Are you listening?” A pause. “Snap out of it, man, Klaus needs you.”

It hurt though. He was so tired, and he couldn’t stand trying and failing again.

“ _Dave_ ,” Ben said, his voice steely. “Get your ass back onto this plane of existence. _Klaus needs you_.”

He blinked, which made him realize he had eyelids again. “Klaus can’t see me,” he mumbled, his tongue leaden and his mouth tasting like gunsmoke and mud.

“He’s been going through withdrawals all day hoping to see you. Come on!”

He flexed his fingers and looked down at himself. Same old dead body, gaping wound in the chest and all. “I thought you didn’t trust me,” he said to Ben.

“That’s because you didn’t explain what was going on,” Ben replied. “What the hell, man.”

“Would you have believed me?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said, “but never mind that. Look at Klaus.” He stepped aside and Dave could see him, struggling against the ropes that had been bound around him, securing him to a chair in the center of a dusty attic room. Before their eyes, he unbalanced himself and fell over onto his side, sobbing.

Dave couldn’t help himself. He stepped forward. “Klaus?”

And Klaus _looked up at him._

“Oh my god,” he whispered through his tears. “Dave. I did it. It worked!”

Dave smiled.

And then everything … froze.

 

* * *

 

When he and his sister were nine, their father died, and they went to live with their Aunt Freddie in Burlington for a few months. The first weekend they were there, she took them to see a film downtown at the movie house. It was Disney’s _Peter Pan_. And just as the movie got to the climactic scene where Peter and Captain Hook fight, there was some kind of malfunction with the film projector, and suddenly the entire movie started running in reverse, much to the dismay of all of the children in the audience.

That was exactly like what happened next.

Dave felt himself being _pulled_ , stretched like a long piece of taffy, back, back, back. Before his eyes, the recognition in Klaus’ eyes faded, the chair uprighted itself; he was untied, struggling and screaming, by Diego; and the rest of the day, most of which Dave had missed in his fit of shapeless despair, played out in reverse. Until suddenly the siblings -- minus Five and Vanya -- were all standing around their father’s bar, and Five appeared in a flash of blue light with a familiar-looking briefcase.

It didn’t take Dave very long to realize what had happened. Five had time-travelled into the middle of the morning meeting and rewritten everything that had happened after it in that timeline. (At least, that was how he figured it worked.) No one seemed to remember that there had been a different version of the day, except Dave.

And Ben.

“They have no idea,” Ben muttered to him. He looked at Dave speculatively. “Should I tell him?”

“I don’t know,” Dave said. He was frustrated beyond belief, but he strangely had a new sense of optimism about the whole thing. Klaus had _seen him_. Therefore it seemed likely that he would be able to see him again. But … “I think he has more immediate things to worry about.” They both looked at Klaus attempting, poorly, to comfort Luther. “You need to help him. I’ll just distract him at this point.”

And so Dave watched him as he struggled to take care of his brother while sick to his stomach with withdrawal and shell shock, tormented by temptation and visions of the past. As Klaus huddled on the floor, sobbing, Dave wished he could tell him it was all right, that he was right here. But even though Klaus was mostly sober, it seemed he wasn’t in the right frame of mind yet to see him. All Dave could do was whisper, “You’re so brave, Klaus. I’m so proud of you,” over and over to his shaking back.

And then Klaus died.

He and Ben stared at his still form while a crowd gathered around, speechless.

“He can’t be dead,” Dave said.

“He can’t be,” Ben said. “I mean, we’re still here. It’s not like when he went to the past.”

A girl poked Klaus in the side. “Um, I don’t think he’s breathing. Should we call 911?”

“Klaus!” Ben bellowed. “Wake the fuck up, dude!”

“If he’s dead,” Dave said frantically, “shouldn’t he be a ghost too?”

“Not necessarily,” Ben said, distracted. “Not all of us get stuck here. Some people … you know, move on.”

Dave frowned. Had Klaus moved on … without him? Did that mean … he should move on, too?

Before he could carry out that thought process any further, Klaus took a sudden, deep breath and sat up.

“Thank fuck,” Ben muttered as Klaus stumbled to his feet and ran out of the club, calling for Luther. “You scared the shit out of us.”

“Us?” Klaus asked, puzzled, but didn’t stop for an answer. He ran down the alley, shouting Luther’s name, and Ben followed. Dave watched them go, shaking his head.

 

* * *

  

“I need something to do,” Klaus muttered. “I’m crawling out of my skin.” He was wandering around the house aimlessly, after his message from their father in the afterlife had been completely dismissed by his siblings. He went from room to room, trailed by Ben (visible) and Dave (invisible). In the gallery, he began to rifle through a basket of his mother’s sewing and eventually came up with a ball of yarn and knitting needles.

“Do you even know how to knit?” Ben asked, one eyebrow raised, echoing Dave’s own reaction.

“Hey, what do you know? Maybe I do.”

“I’ve never seen you knit.”

Klaus ignored him and dragged himself upstairs to his room, then threw himself on his bed and began poking at the yarn with the needles. “It can’t be that hard,” he muttered, sticking his tongue out in concentration, then wondered, “can it be?”

Ben sat down on the bed. “Want to talk?”

“About what?” Klaus stuck one of the needles in his mouth and began trying to wind yarn around the other.

“Well, you did die yesterday.”

He spat the needle out. “Yeah, I already tried talking about that, but nobody gave a shit.”

“I give a shit.”

Klaus sighed.

“What was it like?”

“What do you mean, what was it like? You’ve already died. And ha!” He pointed at Ben with one of the needles. “Now you can never use that shitty _but did you die?_ retaliation on me ever again because guess what, mofo! I did!” He pumped one fist in triumph.

Ben rolled his eyes. “I’m not talking about the actual act of dying. I’m talking about where you went, you know?” He paused. “I’ve never been there.”

“Really? I assumed that must be where you hang out when you get sick of my shit and vanish for a bit.”

“Nope. I’m still around, I just sort of … I don’t know. Stop being me for a bit.”

Klaus snorted. “Sounds nice.”

“It’s not, really.”

Klaus put his knitting down. “Wait. Does that mean whenever I’ve told you to go away while I was having sex, you could still see and hear me?”

Ben looked abashed. “I certainly try not to, trust me.”

“Great.” Klaus looked irritated. “Now I’ll be thinking that the next time I try to get a leg up on someone. Not that I plan to be doing that anytime soon.” His expression changed. He fiddled with the yarn a bit again, and then he said, “Do you think … do you think that means Dave can see and hear me, even though I can’t see him yet?”

Ben and Dave shared a glance. Dave shook his head. He could only imagine how much worse it would be for Klaus if he knew that Dave was there and he just couldn’t get through to Klaus. He was already trying so hard.

“I don’t know,” Ben said slowly.

Luckily, Klaus didn’t press harder. He had something else on his mind. “Can I tell you something kind of crazy?”

“When don’t you?” Ben responded, smirking.

Klaus kicked at him, his bare foot passing through Ben’s leg. “I … I think I might have met Dave … before I met him. I mean, I met his ghost, you know.”

Ben stared at him, quietly. “Go on.”

He sighed. “Well, there was this soldier ghost I met a few times when I was a kid. Haven’t seen him in years, and to be honest I don’t remember what he looked like. Just that,” he grinned, “I thought he was pretty cute, and I kind of had a crush on him for awhile. But then he just stopped showing up and after I started trying to avoid seeing ghosts, I never saw him again. And when I met Dave, that first moment I saw him when I appeared in Vietnam, I thought I maybe recognized him, but then I just dismissed it.” He chewed his lip. “I can’t believe I didn’t really make the connection before. But maybe deep down I didn’t want to, you know? Because if it was him, then that meant I knew Dave was going to die. I guess I was just in denial.”

They were both silent for a moment, and then Klaus snorted. “You know what? I think he told me his name was _Dan._ ” He laughed. “That’d be just like Dave, he was a shitty liar.” But then he frowned. “So do you think it’s possible? If it is, and I could see him before, then why can’t I see him now?”

Dave’s throat was thick with emotion. He reached out and tried to touch Klaus’ curly head. His fingers passed right through it, and Klaus’ hand came up and rubbed at the spot on his head as though it tickled, his hand briefly sharing the same space as Dave’s.

Ben sighed. “I’m sure it’s possible, Klaus. And I don’t know why. But keep trying, okay?”

Klaus covered his eyes with his hands. “I am. I will. I’m going to keep trying.”

 

* * *

 

Of course, after Allison almost died, Klaus backslid on that promise. When Ben punched the mouthful of pills from Klaus’ lips, Dave’s first inclination was to cheer. And then he was dumbfounded, as were Klaus and Ben.

“What did it feel like?” he asked Ben later.

Ben thought about it. “It felt like the best thing ever,” he said finally, “and not just because I’ve wanted to punch Klaus for years.”

 

* * *

 

And now here they were, at the end of the world.

Dave still couldn’t understand why Klaus couldn’t see him. He was projecting Ben’s physical presence all over the place, but he just couldn’t tune into Dave’s presence. And now, as they all stood on the ruined stage and watched a chunk of the moon plummet towards Earth, Dave began to think that he never might.

_Maybe we’ll be ghosts together_ , he thought, watching as Klaus grasped his dog tags in his hands. _Or maybe we’ll go to whatever place it was Klaus went for a few minutes when he died before._ _Whatever happens, please don’t let me be alone again._

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Five said, and explained his plan.

As the siblings joined hands and blue light began to swirl around them, however, Dave realized that being alone might just be what was going to be his fate. If they went back in time, he’d be left here, in this dying world, without Klaus, forever. And … would that mean Klaus would never go back in time to meet him, in this new timeline?

He couldn’t imagine life, or death, without Klaus.

“No,” he muttered. “No!” He looked at Klaus, who was beginning to de-age before his eyes. “Klaus!” he shouted. “Klaus!”

Klaus looked up with an expression of bewilderment and … something like surrender. It was, Dave realized, something very like the expression he’d had on that lost day in the attic. _That’s it_ , Dave thought, _that’s what was missing; he needs to give in, completely. Some part of him must have still been resisting all this time. Why?_

He thought about what Klaus had said about refusing to connect the ghost from his memories with the soldier he met in Vietnam. _Because if he sees me, then I really am dead._

But now, Klaus locked eyes with him, and those eyes widened. His mouth silently formed the word _Dave_.

“Klaus!” he shouted again.

Klaus blinked his eyes rapidly. “Dave!” he shouted, his voice cracking, and twisted around to look at Ben behind him. “Dave! It’s Dave!” He pulled at his siblings’ hands, as though trying to break free, but they held him tight. “I love you, Dave!”  

Dave smiled. “I love you!”

Klaus frowned. He was almost a kid again, as young as he had been long ago when they’d sat on his bed and he’d painted his toenails silver. The blue light had heightened so much that it was almost blinding. “I’ll come back for you!” he shouted. “I promise, Dave, I promise I will!”

Dave smiled.

And then they vanished.

And then the world ended.

And to Dave’s great relief, he ended along with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry. There will be an epilogue.


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has commented on this story. Reading your words have given me so much joy. I wrote this because -- well, because I'm completely obsessed with TUA right now and it's literally all I can think about -- but also because I haven't been able to just sit down and draft something in ages. I've been revising the novel I started working on two years ago, something only one other person in the world has read in its entirety and given me feedback on. And revising is basically just second guessing every single choice you've made for a story, then third-guessing it, and fourth-guessing it ... anyway, it's been nice to just sit down and get it all down in a rush, and hear back from so many people about the emotions they felt as they read it, since that's why I do it in the first place!
> 
> Anyway. Please enjoy this epilogue.

Greenwich Village  
June 28, 1970

* * *

Dave stood just outside the entrance of the Christopher Street-Sheridan Square subway station. All around him, people were milling around, many holding handmade signs and colorful flags and banners. He wanted to join them -- that was the entire reason he’d come all this way -- but now that he was here, he was gripped with indecision and terror. Was he really ready for this?

When he’d heard that there was going to be a march for the anniversary of the riots at the Stonewall Inn, he’d made a decision then and there. He was going. He remembered reading about the riots in the paper when he was still at Walter Reed, recovering from the gunshot wound that had shattered his clavicle and necessitated his discharge. Studying the grainy black and white photos of the press of bodies and raised fists against a wall of police, he’d been simultaneously horrified and electrified. And now, a year later, when he’d seen the much creased and torn flyer (“Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March & Gay-In” it had been titled, and the sight of the words stopped him in his tracks) stapled to a telephone pole outside the campus library, he’d remembered that feeling and knew that it was something he had to be a part of.

He’d caught a ride with a classmate from Plainfield to Montpelier, never telling him what his plans were, then bought a bus ticket to New York City. It was a long, long ride, on a cramped, hot Greyhound, all the way through Southern Vermont, then the Berkshires and Connecticut, before finally reaching the city.

Now he was here, and he was chickening out.

He’d spent eleven months in the A Shau Valley, barely escaping with his life, but joining this march completely petrified him.

“You joining in?” A voice said over his shoulder. Startled, he spun around. Standing just behind him was a tall and wiry man with unkempt, curly hair, a patchy beard, and lively eyes. He was wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt that was a little too small for him, very tight blue jeans, and much scuffed black Chuck Taylors. Mysteriously, he was also carrying a large black briefcase in one hand.  

Dave opened his mouth, but nothing came out. But the man didn’t seem to mind. He held out one bent arm, as though he were about to escort Dave down the stairs of a debutante ball, and said, “Come on, we’ll go together.”

It only took a moment of consideration. Then Dave took a deep breath, took the offered arm, and they stepped into the crowd.

* * *

He hadn’t been prepared for the momentum of the entire thing. As they made their way down 6th Avenue, it was as if the long, winding crowd of people became one. Dave’s head pounded with the shouted chants (“Gay and proud! Say it loud!” “Out of the closet, into the street!”); he didn’t even have the werewithal to join in with them, but it didn’t matter, because he felt their vibrations throbbing inside of him as though he were merely an instrument amplifying their sounds. On the sidewalks, bemused bystanders stood and watched. Some applauded or hooted, some turned away in disgust. At one point, they walked past a man, red-faced and shouting, holding a sign that merely said “SODOM AND GOMORRAH” on it. The chants grew so loud that Dave couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Beside him, his new companion seemed to be completely in his element. He danced in place to some invisible music, looking around and laughing; at one point he turned to Dave and shouted something that was inaudble over the noise of the crowd. 

“ _ What? _ ” Dave asked, straining to hear.

The man leaned closer and yelled, “ _ The energy here is unreal! _ ” and grinned.

This close, Dave could see that the man’s eyes were green, or maybe hazel. He smelled like cotton candy. Dave nodded, dumbly, feeling as though he was being somehow bewitched.

When a lull came in the chanting, the man veered close to him again. “I’m Klaus, by the way,” he said.

“Uh,” Dave said, then shook himself. “Dave.”

“Nice to meet you, Dave. First time at one of these things?”

He blinked. “Has there ever been anything like this before?”

Klaus laughed. “Yeah, probably not, huh?” He shook his head. “Pretty fucking amazing. So,” he said, darting a glance at him, “what’s your story, Dave?”

“My story?” Dave said, a little taken aback. “Nothing special, really.” 

“Now that I don’t believe,” Klaus said. Dave looked up and met his eyes. They were warm and friendly and possessed a startling degree of fondness that was directed at him, of all people, and under their observation Dave felt a creeping blush go up his neck. Staring into them too long made him feel a little warm and almost woozy. He dragged his eyes away and looked at the ground.

“Well, believe it,” he said. “I’m just -- just a small town boy from Vermont who did all the things I was supposed to do but was never really normal, anyway.”

He felt something brush against his arm, and watched in amazement as Klaus grabbed his arm, squeezed it tightly for a moment, and then let it drop to his side. The freed hand tingled as though it had come into contact with a live wire. He clenched it tightly and wondered what was wrong with him, to have such a strong reaction to such a simple act.

“What about you?” he asked, hoping Klaus hadn’t noticed how flummoxed he was.

Klaus shrugged. “I’m just a big city guy who did all the things I wasn’t supposed to do, and who gives a fuck about normal, anyway?” He grinned.

Dave laughed. He couldn’t help it. 

They walked and talked, in their own small private bubble amidst a crowd of thousands. Klaus noticed the tattoo on Dave’s arm, poking out from under the short sleeve of his button-down shirt, and Dave told him about serving in Vietnam, and it turned out Klaus had done a tour, too, which amazed him; on the one hand, the army really had to be desperate to recruit someone as much of a handful as Klaus (a fact clearly obvious to Dave despite having only known the guy for less than an hour); on the other hand, he was amazed at how, despite the clear differences between them, there were these small, overlapping parts of their history, like two wildly different puzzle pieces that somehow seemed to come together.

( _ Come together _ … his brain murmured, as he dropped his eyes and took in the inch of bare stomach poking out between the hem of Klaus’ too-high shirt and low slung pants …  _ get ahold of yourself, Dave… _ )

Klaus told him that he came from a large and very dysfunctional family, that they’d recently weathered some kind of epic crisis and now that it was resolved, he was free to do “whatever the fuck I want with myself” for the first time in awhile. 

Dave told him the story of how he’d been discharged from the military almost fourteen months ago, after getting shot in the middle of the Battle of Hamburger Hill (“Doc said that it was a close call,” Dave said, “if I’d been just a few inches over to the left, the bullet would have hit me straight in the heart and killed me,” and then stopped at the brief but unmistakeable look of anguish that passed over Klaus’ features. “You okay?” “Just a bad memory.”) He told him about his recovery and physical therapy at Walter Reed, and how he’d started classes at Goddard College, his tuition covered by the GI Bill, in January, but wasn’t really sure if he fit in. 

“It’s this weird, experimental, progressive school that doesn’t give out grades or anything,” he explained. “Most of the other students are hippies.” He eyed Klaus. He didn’t exactly look like a hippie, but he didn’t not look like one either. “Not that I have a problem with hippies. I just ... I don’t think they get me.”

“Why’d you choose it, then?” Klaus asked.

“I guess I wanted something as far away from the army as I could get,” he admitted. “And I thought maybe I’d be more likely to, I dunno, meet people like me there.” He blushed, hoping Klaus understood what he meant.

He needn’t have worried. 

“Well, here you are,” Klaus said, gesturing broadly with the hand that wasn’t holding the briefcase. “Among your people.” He grinned, toothily, and Dave grinned back.

They were finally entering Central Park. When they reached the Sheep Meadow, where the “Gay-In” was supposed to happen, Klaus took in the wide open field, the echoing sound of guitars, and the people dancing, gave a whoop, and ran headlong in. He dropped the briefcase and did a messy cartwheel, landing on his side, laughing. Dave jogged over to him. 

“Did you mean to do that?” he asked, offering a hand. Klaus took it, scooping up the briefcase as he stood.

“Darling, I mean everything I do,” he said. This time, Klaus didn’t let go of his hand, and Dave didn’t, either. Again, there was that tingling, a kinetic energy between them, and after the initial contact it didn’t go away, just receded to a pleasant hum. The word “darling”, which had never been addressed to Dave in any other than a purely platonic context before (and he was sure it wasn’t meant that way this time), kept dancing around in his head, spoken in Klaus’ deep, peculiarly melodic tones.

They wandered, hand in hand, through the field, taking it all in: the wild dancers, the singing and cheering, men kissing men, women kissing women, and everything in between. Dave felt as though he’d stumbled into some alternative universe where normal societal laws did not apply. On the fringes of the field, there were police; guarding them from onlookers, or watching for any infringement of the law, Dave wasn’t quite sure. 

Someone offered them a joint, and Dave was considering -- he’d smoked before, and the police didn’t seem too interested in getting that involved in the goings-on of the Gay-In, but before he could say anything, Klaus held up a hand to decline for himself, so he did, too. He was surprised, but Klaus said, in explanation, “I’ve been sober for awhile, and I’m kind of an all-or-nothing guy, it turns out.” 

Eventually, they found a shady spot to sit under one of the few trees. Klaus collapsed and laid flat on his back, sighing. Dave wanted to lay down beside him but only sat, a little stiffly. The briefcase sat discarded at their feet.

“What’s with that thing?” Dave asked, pointing.

Klaus craned his head up to look. “Oh,” he said. “It was a parting gift, I guess you could say, from one of my brothers. He’s the one who told me I should come here.”

“You mean, come to the rally?” Klaus nodded. “Wow. It must be nice to have family that, well, accept you.”

Klaus reached up and patted him gently on the arm. “You should really come out to your mom, I’m sure she’ll come around,” he said, his voice a little sleepy.

Dave looked down at him sharply. He hadn’t said anything about not being out to his mother, or really anything about his family at all, to Klaus. How did he know? But then he relaxed. Chances were, many people around here weren’t out to their parents. Klaus was just making an educated guess.

Gingerly, he lowered himself down to lay next to Klaus. The ground was hard and stony and the grass tickled his bare forearms and neck, but it also felt deliciously cool, and he could smell Klaus again, the sweet, spicy smell cut with the scent of sweat from the hot summer day. He didn’t think he ever wanted to move. He could feel Klaus’ eyes on him, studying him, and when he looked over, he saw just how close they were. Kissing distance. That sense of being under a spell returned to him, and he reached up and cupped Klaus’ cheek in one hand. Those greenish eyes flickered closed at the contact, and then Dave didn’t know exactly happened, but suddenly he had leaned over, closing whatever distance was left between them, and pressed their lips together.

It was a remarkably chaste kiss. Dave had never kissed another man, and Klaus’ mouth was soft and welcoming, but he didn’t try to deepen the kiss. He tasted salty and his facial hair tickled against Dave’s face. When Dave pulled back, he was startled to see a few tears tracking down Klaus’ cheeks. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“What’s wrong?” Dave asked, dumbstruck. He was pretty certain kissing shouldn’t cause this kind of reaction.

“Nothing, nothing,” Klaus mumbled, rubbing at his face with the heel of his hands. 

“Did I do something wrong?” Dave couldn’t help but marvel at the bizarre paradox of the man beside him, so exuberant and confident but strangely vulnerable and gentle at the same time. Klaus was overwhelming, but somehow that made him want him even more. He reached and brushed away some dampness near his eyes that Klaus had missed.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, you’re perfect,” Klaus said, and kissed him back, this time more forcefully, familiarly, as though they were old lovers. Soon, Dave had lost all of his reticence, along with the awareness that they were in public, surrounded by hundreds of people. When they finally parted, he felt as though he were waking from a century-long slumber, like a princess in a fairy tale. 

“Hey,” Klaus said, smiling lazily at him.

“Hey,” he said back, a little dazed. 

They kissed again and then slowly untangled themselves and sat up. The crowds were starting to thin, and the sun was beginning to slide down towards the horizon. The afternoon was nearly over. 

Standing up, they brushed dirt and grass off of each other. Klaus had a leaf stuck in his wild hair, and between that and the beard he looked vaguely Pan-like, an idea which so delighted Dave that he almost wanted to leave it in. But he plucked it out and let it drift down to the grass.

“What are you doing after this?” Klaus asked. He was swinging the briefcase back and forth between each hand, like a child with too much energy. 

“I was planning on catching a bus back up to Montpelier,” he said. He wouldn’t get in until close to midnight, he figured, and then he’d have to walk or hitchhike back to Plainfield.

Klaus looked hesitant, a wholly alien expression on his face. 

“What is it?” Dave asked.

He shrugged, a slow rolling of his shoulders. “I was going to ask … want to hang around here with me for a few days?”

Dave colored. “I … I don’t have money for a hotel room …”

“I do.” Klaus took one of his hands. “I’m asking you to stay with me, silly.”

“Oh.” He looked down at Klaus’s hand. The palm was tattooed, he realized, with the word “HELLO” in a large black letters. He wondered if it hurt to get a tattoo in that spot. He could feel that he was at a crossroads, about to make one of those decisions that could change the course of his entire life. It was crazy: go home with a strange man he’d only known for a few hours? It just wasn’t sensible. And it was dangerous.

But Dave had always done the sensible thing, and he’d spent a year in constant danger, and he needed a  _ change _ .

“Okay,” he said, and was immediately amazed at himself.

Klaus’ face broke into a broad, irrepressible grin. “Really?” he said, eagerly, and then gave a little jump, kicking his feet together in midair. Dave laughed, and thought that he might laugh more over the next few days than he had in the last few years, if this afternoon was any indication.

“So where are you staying?” he asked, as they made their way out of the Sheep Meadow.

“Oh, I haven’t actually, er, got a room yet. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.”

And somehow, he was sure they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief historical note for this epilogue:
> 
> The rally that Dave and Klaus attend is, of course, the first NYC Gay Pride Parade, also considered to be the first Gay Pride Parade, period. I used two main sources to research this, and I recommend checking them out, because they are amazing.
> 
> ["Thousands of Homosexuals Hold a Protest Rally in Central Park,"](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/06/29/archives/thousands-of-homosexuals-hold-a-protest-rally-in-central-park.html) New York Times, June 29, 1970.
> 
> ["Gay and Proud" documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OevqwHmeEFI), Library of Congress.  
> \- This video is amazing. It's entirely composed of footage overlaid with audio interviews from that first parade. A big fat TW for this as a few of the audio clips contain homophobic remarks. The end, during the Gay-In, is really beautiful and moving. Highly recommended, a great source to learn about LBGTQIA history.
> 
> That's it! Or is it? I confess I have an idea for a tiny one-shot sequel to this. I probably should do something besides think about this universe for awhile, but we'll see what happens.
> 
> Thanks again!


End file.
